In Ireland now, Catholics will be insulted for showing their faith

Within a Europe that is abandoning its traditional values as decisively as an iceberg in the Caribbean, no country seems to be changing as irreversibly as Ireland. A land that not so long ago saw itself as a moral rival to the Vatican has effectively abandoned Catholicism for doctrinaire secularism, the narrow-mindedness of which is almost a mirror image of what it left behind. What both Irelands have in common is an official pseudo-tolerance that pretends to respect “diversity” even as it demonises dissent. There is no “populist” party in Ireland such as Alt-fur-Deutschland or Reform in the UK, and why would there be? After all, everything is tiptop and perfectly well in the state of Ireland, just as it was for Humpty Dumpty. 

Yes, most thinking people know that this new Ireland is a sham, just as the same can be said about this new Europe. The heart is hollow. What is gone is any generic sense of a worthwhile future for which this generation lives and breeds. Previous generations strove towards tomorrow: Now we live solely for the present. Quite simply, any society that treats homosexual marriage as being equal to the traditional kind and abortion on demand as a fundamental human right is probably doomed within a couple of generations. The incorporation of these two existential rejections of Christian traditions into living law serve as markers of the total triumph of dogmatic, liberal secularism throughout society. 

This may loosely but appositely summarised within the DEI heresy, for dei is also the Latin plural for gods, which is precisely what those liberal precepts have become. The values themselves are now more important than the lives that they rule, which of course makes them gods. And how can mere humans change those values that are themselves gods? Moreover, any public indulgence in old fashioned Christianity will be ruthlessly attacked by secular-vigilantes who have inherited the mantle of vicious intolerance. The Ireland editor of Ireland’s best-selling daily newspaper, The Irish Independent, Fionnán Sheahan recently discovered the price of bearing the traditional cross on his forehead on Ash Wednesday – namely, ferocious on-line mockery and abuse. What was once an almost unanimous (and not inaccurate) national declaration of personal and spiritual modesty – from  ashes we come and to ashes we shall return –  became the perfect opportunity for Ireland’s secularist bigots to lynch him on-line. One can be absolutely sure that no Muslims would be vilified for celebrating their religion in such modest, low-key fashion. Secularists are only secular about Christianity: In their eyes, Islam is a religion of peace, and Islamophobia is an evil curse upon personkind. 

But the vilification of Catholicism in Ireland merely reflects the indifference Europe now exhibits – indeed, almost flaunts – towards the fate of Christians in Africa and Asia. What is happening in Gaza is undeniably a human catastrophe, but similarly undeniable, if less photogenically available, is the catastrophic plight of Christians across much of Africa – especially Nigeria, Mozambique, Congo, Egypt, Somalia, Sudan – where careful, pre-planned and deeply-personalised massacres of many thousands of non-Muslims are both routine and largely unreported. Likewise in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Such European indifference is relatively new. Sixty years ago, much of Europe raged at the fate of the largely Ibo (now Igbo) Catholics of Biafra, where hundreds of thousands were starved to death by the Federal government.

Europe’s demographics reflect this secular rejection of what had been widespread acceptance of Christian norms. In almost every European state, the Muslim population is increasing while the indigenous population is falling. In France, 68 per cent of the Muslim population – which numbered 1.7 million in the greater Paris area – declare that their religion is important to them. In that same area, only 8 per cent of Catholics attend weekly Mass. Demographics are exponentially nearly as terrifying as unhindered gravity, and the arithmetic for London, Madrid, Paris, Malmo, Birmingham and Berlin all report the same shift: As Christianity’s numbers plummet, those of Islam rise, along with the creation of a fictionalised history that attests to the ancient roots of Islam in Europe. 

As Rudolf Reumaier, Managing Director of Local History (yes, there is such a title) gushed, “Wherever you look, Germany’s history is intertwined with Islam…Home is diversity: Home encompasses all that is here. And Islam has been here for a very long time.”

This well-meaning but ahistorical gibberish was published by the Robert Bosch Stiftung (Foundation) which very definitely puts it on the right side of the argument: What decent soul is ever going to dispute such worthy nonsense? Bosch was the founder of the mighty home-appliance industry, and was an opponent of National Socialism (or so the company website declares). His Stiftung is similarly awash with good intentions. And was not Germany’s acceptance a decade ago of two million refugees from the Arab world similarly virtuous? Of course it was! But who in a generation’s time will be raising statues to thank Angela Merkel for her foresight and kindness? The Bosch Stiftung, perhaps, by which time it might be better known as the Al-Bosch Stiftung.

Before I am silenced with cries of Islamophobia, let me ask: What happened to the Greek, Roman, Jewish, Punic and Berber civilisations that once dominated North Africa? They vanished within the Arab-speaking empire following Arab conquest of the 7th century. And Carthage: Remember that? It was not the ruthless suppression of Hannibal’s forces by the Roman general Scipio of Africa that led to the complete disappearance of that civilisation so much as Arab conquest, to be followed by mass immigration in the 17th Century from the Arabian peninsula. 

Which takes us a long way from the ash-mark on Fionnán Sheahan’s forehead, does it not? Not at all. The first step in the conquest of any native peoples comes when they begin to disdain their own culture and their own triumphs. The Irish people clung onto the defining talismans of identity throughout the centuries of rule by the British, but in the century of independence have begun to disown and ridicule those defining characteristics. The priests and nuns of Ireland not merely guarded Irishness through the centuries of poverty and immiseration, building hospitals and schools and teaching the majority population the rudiments and rubrics of identity, but did similar heroic, selfless work around the world. And now all forgotten or ridiculed.

Is that not what has happened to Europe? Does it not believe in female careers rather than motherhood, secularism rather than faith, and the surgical simplicities of abortion rather than the moral complexities of life?  So what future has any continent that entrusts that vital, existential dimension to immigrants? Ask Carthage. 

Kevin Myers is an Irish journalist, author and broadcaster. He has reported on the wars in Northern Ireland, where he worked throughout the 1970s, Beirut and Bosnia.